Mary Katrantzou / Fall 2012 RTW

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“I wanted to use waves of color in this collection—but taken from things you use in everyday life,” said Mary Katrantzou, in part explanation of the extraordinary digital patterning and Ecole Lesage embroidery covering every curve, plane, and flowing chiffon swirl in her fall collection. Yes, you did read that right: the storied Parisian couture embroidery house has collaborated with the young Greek phenomenon to produce embellishments with, among other components, yellow school pencils complete with their pink erasers (which her team bought in bulk in a London rock-bottom discount pound shop and transported to Paris). For this season Katrantzou has been orchestrating the third of her surreal fantasias about domestic surroundings. In her computer—she’s the Leonardo of Photoshop—Katrantzou set out on a color-coded regimentation of cutlery, coat hangers, old-fashioned typewriters, telephone dials, ceramic taps, as well as the contents of desks, which sent her off (hence the pens and pencils). To fill in the green section, she stepped out into an imaginary formal garden, bringing in box parterres and grass verges—Lesage, as it were, did the hedge-trimming. (Grass green, by the way, is a fall color to watch.)

Since she started going full tilt with her talent for trompe l’oeil, Katrantzou has proved, astonishingly rapidly, how far she can win women over to the idea of wearing a Fabergé jeweled egg as a dress or parading in a pantsuit horizontally printed with fields of tulips. That puts her in the vanguard of the new “extremist” movement that has suddenly bubbled up as an antirecessionary fashion-culture phenomenon in the past year. The reason that she can afford to work with a superdeluxe resource such as Lesage (and that they will consider a relationship with such a new London-based designer) is that she has steadily built up a collection of simplified selling pieces—more streamlined dresses, blouses, knits, and scarves, which now reach 110 stores. Though she also has eight art-collecting women who order her couture pieces undiluted—and 20 more who only buy the most extravagant items when they appear in stores. Meanwhile, her bold influence has ricocheted around collections too numerous to mention.

Desires move quickly, though, and even the practitioners of Katrantzou’s full-strength statement-wear will be looking for the new in this collection. Structure, she’s already done, and so it was the flou and the incredible knitwear that attracted the gasps for fall. Cascades of yards of chiffon, flowing from the back of dresses, looked breathtaking in motion—whatever print imagery they involved ceased to matter, so delicate was its pastelly coloration. And as for the knitwear: quite possibly the most intensely embellished and costly sweater-dresses ever conceived were sent into the world by Mary Katrantzou today. Of course, she’s going to have versions of these patterns to sell. But given the global elite of shoppers Katrantzou’s getting to know, the likelihood of these ornate knits flying out of stores shouldn’t be underestimated, either.